Vial of Cesium-137 Discovered Beside Freeway : Search: The radioactive material, believed stolen from a South Gate company, is found after the company receives an anonymous telephone tip.

A container of potentially lethal radioactive material believed stolen by a disgruntled employee from an oil exploration company building in South Gate was found beside the Long Beach Freeway on Thursday.

Searchers from Flo-Log Inc. said the missing vial of cesium-137, an isotope used in oil exploration, was found in a patch of ice plant beside a Firestone Boulevard on-ramp in South Gate about 24 hours after the firm received an anonymous telephone tip.

“The caller asked us if we had found what we were looking for,” said Ken Kitchens, a Flo-Log equipment manager. Kitchens said that when the caller was told that the vial was still missing, “he told us to look on an off-ramp of the 710 (Long Beach Freeway).”

Kitchens said that because of the length of the freeway, and because the caller had said “off-ramp,” rather than “on-ramp,” it was not until noon Thursday that Flo-Log employees using hand-held Geiger counters found the 3 1/2-inch-long titanium vial in the freeway landscaping just south of Firestone.

California Highway Patrol units sealed off the on-ramp until a company truck made it to the scene with a radiation-proof container. Using protective equipment, Flo-Log employees placed the vial in the container and returned it to the building in South Gate from which it had disappeared.

Kitchens said tests showed that none of the radioactive powder had spilled from the sealed vial. However, he said that anyone handling the vial without protective gloves and clothing could have received radiation burns.

Alan Cassiano, chief executive officer of Flo-Log, said that over three or four days, anyone who had close contact with the vial would lose his hair. Anyone who remained in contact with the vial for seven to 10 days probably would die, Cassiano said.

Flo-Log employees armed with Geiger counters had searched a 500-mile stretch of Interstate 5 on Tuesday on the theory that the vial might somehow have fallen from a truck between an oil field in Northern California and the company offices in South Gate.

However, state officials said from the outset that they thought the vial had been stolen and that the theft was an inside job.

Donald Bunn, chief of the state Department of Health Services radiological unit in Sacramento, said he believes the vial was taken, and later dumped beside the freeway, by a “disgruntled employee.”

Company officials apparently agreed with this theory.

“Whoever took it had to go three combination locks--on the building, on an (inside) door and on the pig (a special protective container)--to get to that vial,” Kitchens said.

Cassiano expressed doubt that the theft was for financial gain, noting that the thief went to a lot of trouble to take the vial, worth between $1,500 and $2,000.

Flo-Log is one of about 2,500 California firms licensed by the state to use so-called low-level radioactive material for industrial and medical purposes. The company has been doing business for 10 years without any major mishaps.

Flo-Log last used the cesium on Jan. 20 to monitor an oil well near Willows in Northern California. The radioactive material was reloaded into a protective lead container, placed in a locked box, then loaded onto a safe on a Flo-Log truck and driven back to South Gate.

It was discovered missing Feb. 17 when Flo-Log workers went to get the cesium for use on an oil well near Santa Barbara.

Malnic reported from Los Angeles and Morain from Sacramento.